


Queen Rampant

by somnolentblue



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: 5 Things, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnolentblue/pseuds/somnolentblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ravenna learns how to meet her own needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen Rampant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figuline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figuline/gifts).



> I would like to thank A and R for their cheerleading and beta-reading.
> 
> Content notes are found at the end of the story.

**Sustenance**

“Ravenna,” her mother says, “you will not die here. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mother,” she replies, distracted by Finn sneaking in behind their mother’s back. He’s clutching a bag to his chest, and she hopes that it holds the apples he promised her. 

Her mother grabs her chin and forces Ravenna to meet her eyes. “Do you agree to be guided by me?” Ravenna nods, but her mother says, “No, Ravenna, answer me: do you agree to be guided by me?” 

Ravenna says, “Yes.” 

That night her mother rinses her hair with rosemary and scrubs her feet and hands until she wants to cry. She can no longer go out and beg and steal with Finn, and he and their mother’s small earnings can’t keep them fed. Ravenna gets most of the food, but her stomach still hurts. When Ravenna begs to help, her mother tells her, “You are helping,” and makes her recite words in a language she doesn’t understand. 

The first time she feasts on another’s life is when King Athanaric steals her from her home. It is her mother’s hand that guides the knife and her mother’s life that’s bound to hers; after three drops of red on white Ravenna is dizzy. The feeling of fullness ebbs away soon enough, and Ravenna’s hunger returns as her glowing beauty fades and Athanaric’s scouts go out to find another girl for the king’s chambers. 

The second time she binds another’s life to her own, it is Athanaric’s, and she sups until there’s nothing left to consume.

**Security**

Ravenna tunes out the droning of the priest, concentrating instead on her power uncurling through the chapel. She can feel Finn in the shadows, and she’s comforted by his presence; Roderick shines beside her, and she basks in the pulse of his heartbeat and the quirk of his lips that intimate that he, too, finds the elaborate marriage ceremony they’re enduring to be ridiculous. However, a ruling king can’t marry a foreign dignitary without, as he says, enough pomp to drown an elephant, so they’ve opened the wine casks and quietly mortgaged some of the crown jewels to pay for their show of unity and power. 

The priest’s litany ceases, and it’s time for the final rite. She stands beside her husband, but she kneels before her king, formally renouncing her titles and forsaking all ties not of kin. He places a crown upon her brow, smiling at her, and her lips curve in return. She rises a queen consort, and she’s warmed by the cheering of Roderick’s court. 

Roderick’s kingdom — her kingdom — prospers. She can’t force the crops to grow or the rains to fall, but she can let the land sip of her vitality. Her beauty fades, sent into fields and streams, but her ladies assure her that she’s aging gracefully, silver hair hiding amongst the gold and baths of cream smoothing her skin. 

She and Roderick grow old together, laugh and fight and sleep together, and it’s a shock when she finds herself deposed in favor of a slip of a girl, young and, Roderick desperately tells her, fecund. The kingdom must have an heir of the blood, he says, and she snarls and restrains herself from clawing his pleading face. 

It takes her two years to seize back her kingdom. She lets her advisors believe that she has died of heartache and seeks their counsel as Erinye, a long-hidden princess who wishes only to avenge the wrongs dealt her mother. 

This time, she crowns herself queen regnant.

**Stability**

She steps out of the shadows and watches Finn watch the girl. The tailor is measuring her for new clothing, and Snow White turns and stretches her limbs when directed to do so, staring at the wall before her. Her blankness grates, and Ravenna wishes that the girl had some spark that would, at the least, be entertaining while Ravenna left her in limbo. 

“She’s beautiful,” Finn breathes. 

“Once,” Ravenna murmurs, “a man thought me beautiful.” 

Finn looks sharply at her. “And so you are,” he says. 

“Yes. But tell me, brother, what became of that man who thought me beautiful?”

He inhales and exhales very slowly, but he says nothing. He neither fidgets nor sweats, but his thumb rubs the ring on his fore-finger, the one they took off the hand of a long-dead king in a long-forgotten kingdom.

She steps back into the shadows with the rustle of wings, resolving to watching Finn more closely. He is her brother, but she is his queen. He is as subject to her edicts, including those governing his relationships, as the lowest street-sweeper. She will not see her decrees broken; she will abide no Athanarics in her kingdom. 

She will not see her history re-enacted.

**Self-sufficiency**

Ravenna bids her brother follow the huntsman, and she wonders if she will see him again — wonders if she wants to see him again. Finn has become a problem, increasingly rapacious and straining her patience. He seeks out her scraps and ruins them further, forging wraiths of the women, who wail incessantly and disturb her sleep, and vengeful idiots of the men, who no longer bring in crops and waste away uselessly. He abided by Ravenna’s instructions and didn’t touch the child in the tower; however, Ravenna knows he failed to notice the weapon in the girl’s hand because he allowed himself to become entranced by her face. The mirror has long whispered that Finn hobbles her, and much of her power of late has been expended healing him.

The forest has grown strong, echoing her power and strength, and he could easily become lost amongst the labyrinthine trees where the sun remains occluded and the streams double back and run both ways. 

She is writing instructions to her diplomats in the caliph’s court when she feels her bond with Finn fray. He is dying, and she reflexively sustains him. She feels the scrape of wood against her lungs and with each beat her heart tears itself further apart. She sees the huntsman’s face, angry and wrathful, and she knows he will not relent; she would not have time to knit Finn’s flesh back together before the huntsman strikes again. She cuts the tide of power that is draining her dry and slides back into her own skin. Her bond with Finn snaps, and, as she screams her rage, her shape slips once more.

When she comes back to herself she storms through the castle, seeking out someone — anyone — to supplement her dwindling power. Her brother is dead, and it was not by her hand — he has lived by her, and he should die by her, not by some drunken sot so desperate that he believes in children’s tales of resurrection and happily ever after. Finn had promised his death to _her_ , to her survival and power, just as their mother had done, and the huntsman broke the first promise her brother gave her. She is going to kill him for this, and his entrails will be sweet.

**Succession**

“You can’t have my heart,” Snow White says. 

Ravenna knows that she’s dying, that the girl has dealt her a killing blow, and she finds herself drawn towards the mirror. Its siren song reverberates through her, inescapable and inexorable, and she lets go. It swallows her down, and she joins the cacophony of the sorcerers who came before her, bound to the mirror and its new master. 

It takes ages, long enough for the new queen to have acquired scars and a limping gait, but Ravenna extricates herself from the morass one sticky strand of soul at a time. She drifts through the castle, observing courtiers and diplomats and servants go about their lives. All of them whisper about their queen, loving her and hating her and speculating that she is a changeling, slipped in by elves or faeries or demons during those long years of Ravenna’s rule. 

Sometimes, the mirror calls Ravenna back to the topmost room in the north tower, where it lives with the other indestructible remnants of Ravenna’s arts. Its new master can be found there gazing on her own reflection when she is troubled, and her need summons Ravenna wherever she might have roamed. 

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” Snow White murmurs, reaching out to run a hand down along its curve, “how do I save them all?” She always remains there in the silence until darkness settles and the huntsman comes to guide her away, a hand on her shoulder and a spiteful glance cast at the mirror.

Ravenna is bound by the mirror to answer Snow White’s questions, but no law of its magic says she must do so in corporeal form. She whispers to Snow White as she sleeps, counselling her about the Duke’s machinations and how to fill the empty treasury and who, of her coterie of intimates, she may trust with her body.

And Ravenna smirks. She may not have Snow White’s heart, but the girl has Ravenna’s: she took her kingdom through the blood of its ruler and she will keep it however she must. 

The queen will bow to no one.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: non-explicit rape, canon-compliant death.


End file.
